A Culture of Growth
A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy (Princeton University Press, 2016) is Joel Mokyr's most ambitious historical argument — a four-hundred-page explanation of why sustained economic growth began in Europe rather than elsewhere, and why it began in the eighteenth century rather than earlier. The book's answer, developed across extensive historical and quantitative evidence, is that a specific cultural configuration — what Mokyr calls the 'culture of growth' — emerged in early modern Europe and made possible the institutional innovations that we now recognize as the Industrial Enlightenment. The book synthesized Mokyr's four decades of research into a unified account of how cultural frameworks determine institutional possibilities, and how institutional possibilities determine technological outcomes.
In the AI Story
The book's most important contribution was bringing cultural analysis into economic history with rigor. Mokyr argued that material and institutional explanations of the Industrial Revolution — coal, colonies, property rights — are necessary but not sufficient. The additional ingredient was a cultural framework that made certain institutional innovations thinkable: Baconian faith in useful knowledge, the respect of scholars for artisans, the willingness to challenge received authority, the commitment to open publication of scientific results.
The concept of the Republic of Letters — the transnational correspondence network of European intellectuals in the 17th and 18th centuries — receives particular emphasis. This network, operating largely through letters, scientific societies, and printed publications, created a marketplace of ideas that extended beyond national boundaries and beyond the control of any single political authority. Competition among European states prevented any single ruler from suppressing intellectual exchange.
The book's framework illuminates the AI transition's cultural dimension. Just as the Industrial Revolution required a cultural framework that made institutional innovation thinkable, the AI transition requires cultural frameworks for evaluating AI-generated output, for distinguishing productive intensity from auto-exploitation, for cultivating the judgment that the new economy rewards. These frameworks do not yet fully exist. They must be built — by what Mokyr, following Richard McKenzie, calls cultural entrepreneurs.
The book was instrumental in the 2025 Nobel Committee's decision. The committee cited A Culture of Growth's account of how cultural conditions enable institutional innovations, which in turn enable technological progress — a three-tier causal chain that provides the framework for thinking about AI governance.
Origin
Published by Princeton University Press in 2016 as part of the Graz Schumpeter Lectures series. The book represented Mokyr's synthesis of cultural history, economic history, and institutional analysis into a unified framework.
Key Ideas
Culture as explanans, not explanandum. Culture shapes institutional possibilities; institutions shape technological outcomes. The three-tier causal chain runs from culture through institutions to technology.
Baconian faith in useful knowledge. The cultural conviction that understanding nature produces benefits for humanity — a conviction without which the Industrial Enlightenment was unthinkable.
The Republic of Letters. The transnational intellectual community that created a competitive marketplace of ideas extending beyond any state's control.
Cultural entrepreneurs as agents. Specific individuals — Francis Bacon, the philosophes, the founders of scientific societies — reshaped cultural frameworks to make institutional innovation thinkable.
Competition among states as precondition. European political fragmentation prevented any single authority from suppressing intellectual exchange, creating the conditions for cross-pollination.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- Mokyr, Joel. A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy (Princeton University Press, 2016).
- McCloskey, Deirdre. Bourgeois Dignity (University of Chicago Press, 2010).
- Jacob, Margaret C. The First Knowledge Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2014).